Training Camp Day 3: Sounders test their fitness

Seattle Sounders coach Sigi Schmid took his team indoors Wednesday at the Virginia Mason Athletic Center in Renton in order to conduct the start of two days of fitness testing as the club continued its first week of training camp.

Players were wired up to heart monitors and put through the paces on an endurance test by repeatedly running back and forth on a 20-meter course.

Schmid said in the old days, teams would require players to run two miles in less than 12 minutes, but testing has gotten much more sophisticated and geared toward an actual soccer simulation.

“You’re not going to run one pace for 12 minutes in a game,” he said. “This is run 20 meters, back and forth. You’re constantly turning, which is what you’re doing in a game.

“In the old days, you could cheat these things. Now you can’t because they’ve got heart monitors on and so forth. So if you put up this super-human effort just to show you can get through it and you’re mentally really tough, your heart monitor blows up. So you know well, he just went overboard on it today. You can tell who is pushing themselves and whose not.”

Schmid said his team’s general fitness was good, though some players he suspected were not in peak shape proved him right.

“One of the things I knew about Estrada was he’s a pretty fit guy,” Schmid said. “He can run the line, he can play up front, he’s somebody who is active and keeps moving. He definitely demonstrated his fitness today. That was Landon Donovan-like.”

The Sounders also played some soccer on the Seahawks’ indoor training facility and will be back inside Thursday for another round of testing, this time involving timed sprints and vertical jumping.

Jaqua slowed: Nate Jaqua continues to sit out with an ligament inflammation in his pelvis. The veteran froward had an injection Tuesday and wanted to take part in some of Wednesday’s training, but is being brought back cautiously.

Schmid said he’d likely keep Jaqua sidelined the rest of the week and then let him go full bore next week when the team moves its training camp to Arizona.